In the construction and industrial industries, people are familiar with powder actuated setting tools. These are tools designed to forcefully expel a fastener into a workpiece by using an explosive powder charge to accelerate a piston which ultimately expels the fastener through physical contact therewith. In general, the tools resemble guns, having a barrel, housing, trigger, firing mechanism, charge and load (fastener). Such tools have been in existence for some time and are well disclosed in the patent literature. As powder actuated tools utilize a firing pin to ignite the powder charge, it is necessary to cycle the firing pin to a position where it is ready to fire. This has been done in the prior art by forcing a pin or a carrier for the pin into a ready to fire position against the action of a pair of coil springs. The linear compression force required to overcome the two coil springs, while certainly possible, and indeed operable, is relatively high. Such property causes the operator of the setting tool to need to bear down on the tool with considerably more force than might be desirable to place the setting tool in a position to dispense a fastener to the workpiece.
As will be appreciated by readers hereof, rapid completion of tasks is key in most endeavors whether they be private matters or commercial matters. High compression requirements as discussed above effectively slow the effort from both the time to compression standpoint and the operator fatigue standpoint. It is therefore understandable that high compression requirements to use a setting tool are not desirable as they negatively impact production. Since production must stay high, setting tools having lower compression requirements would be of benefit to the art.